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Description

Transcribing human speech. Simulating global climate. Trouncing the world’s best Go players. The amazing versatility of modern computers disguises their fundamental simplicity. They are ultimately just machines for reading, comparing and overwriting bits. In the next few years, though, we will start to leave the world of bits behind. Computers exploiting the strangeness of quantum mechanics will soon accomplish tasks that would defeat even the largest, fastest bit-based supercomputers.

Quantum computation isn’t just a technological advance, though. It could hold the key to explaining the origin of space itself. The same techniques that will be used to protect delicate quantum computer memories from corruption appear to be used by nature to stitch together the fabric of spacetime. This exciting public talk will be a tour of this remarkable confluence of the practical and the fundamental.

About the speaker

Patrick Hayden is a professor in Physics at Stanford University. He is a leader in understanding the connections between information processing and the fundamental laws of physics. His work explores the potential for computers built from microscopic ‘quantum mechanical’ components to quickly solve problems that would defeat even the world’s largest supercomputers. His work is contributing to our understanding of the limits that quantum mechanics places on information processing, and how to exploit quantum effects for computing and other aspects of communication.